


In a Silent Way

by levendis



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Body Horror, Bondage, Boss/Employee Relationship, Communication Failure, Coulson has a bionic hand, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Team as Family, dad jokes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:44:35
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4234266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/levendis/pseuds/levendis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Neither of them are the people they used to be, but it works. It has to work, right? Post s2. dom!May, sub!Coulson, AU where Simmons does not get eaten by a space rock</p>
            </blockquote>





	In a Silent Way

Phil Coulson is a liar. It’s an important part of his job, and he’s good at it. He lies because he has to and because he’s forgotten how not to. That’s the deal, being the boss of a secret organization in charge of humanity’s safety. Some of the time, most of the time, borderline all of the time - you gotta hold stuff back. Gotta hold _yourself_ back.

But here, at least, he is honest. There’s no lie in the way his body reacts to her. Nowhere to run, no way to run, tied up and spread open on what passes for a bed in this base. No room on his face for the bland, blank smile he wears around. He’s more vulnerable than he’s been in years.

Melinda could kill him. He’s glad she doesn’t want to kill him. She’s earned the right to hate him, certainly. If he were more conscious he would take note of her apparent disregard for him, for this. He could be a mark, an op, for all she seems to care. Seduce the Director, infiltrate the inner workings, get in and get it over with and get out. But he is, as ever, lost in the haze, and he’ll save the observation for later, his scheduled daily hour of self-loathing and self-doubt. Now, he’s just helpless and helplessly turned on.

She’s beautiful. She’s efficiently just as undressed as she needs to be: tank top, SHIELD-issue grey briefs. Socks on, gun within reach. She’s breathing just hard enough for him to believe that she’s enjoying this. She’s ripping open the foil wrapper of a condom.

The squeaking of the crap bed-springs and the clinks of metal hardware. The needy whine escaping him, the beginnings of a howl building in his chest. He closes his eyes.

He’s not what he is and he’s not what he’s done. He’s nothing, nothing. Sweat and skin and bone. Physical need, desire; the lift of his hips off the mattress as she brusquely rolls the condom down over his cock, the muscles straining in his arms. Clenched teeth and rushing blood. No decisions to make, nothing in the balance. Just this, just them. Just _her_.

Her fingers hesitate as they drift down his chest, pausing when they hit scar tissue. He’d call it tenderness if he didn’t know better. He opens his eyes again and catches the edge of some nameless emotion slipping off her face. She keeps her expression neutral as she straddles him, settles down on top of him, guides his cock inside her. One hand braced on his stomach for balance, the other flitting around with uncharacteristic skittishness, over her breasts and neck, sweeping stray strands of hair away from her mouth. Maybe something shifting around her eyes, or a twitch of the lips; maybe he’s just seeing what he wants to see.

She sets a rigid, methodical rhythm. By now, she knows what will get him off. She’s got it down to a science. The time they have to allocate to this has decreased significantly since the first night she pulled him into bed. That’s something, at least. Efficiency is important in an organization like SHIELD. The specific angle, the particular speed, the fingernails scratching red lines into his side.

Here he is honest and if he’s being honest, he’ll admit that he wants her to hurt him. Wants to be scratched and cut and bruised, because he deserves it and because - hell, because it just _does_ something for him. If his aching erection is anything to go by. But she won’t, she never does, not really. She can do anything she wants, and she’s holding back.

In his scheduled daily hour of self-loathing and self-doubt, he’ll remind himself that she is owed better than brutality, owed a role and a position outside what she’s paid to be. He’ll remind himself that she is not the Calvary, that she understandably is uncomfortable with causing harm, that he is once again running roughshod over whatever gentleness, kindness, whatever love is still in her to give.

Right now, he’s just frustrated.

His right hand flexing and curling, his left twitching sporadically, trying and failing to interpret what his brain is telling it to do. Pulling down hard against the restraints, the pain and arousal intertwining. All the things he won’t say crowding the back of his throat. The reasonable fear of something slipping out when he’s not paying attention. The moment where he forgets to be afraid.

Maybe he’s already said something dumb. She hasn’t mentioned anything. He’d ask for a gag - remove the temptation - but she says she likes the sounds he makes. She says she likes it when he says her name.

So he says her name, over and over. A prayer, a passcode, an apology. He asks for permission, deliverance. He does not ask for her forgiveness. He says her name like it’s the last piece to the puzzle his soul is, and then he falls apart, coming hard with a dangerous affection in the inflection of the words on his lips, and long, long before she does.

He’d reciprocate if she’d let him (he’s got a talented tongue, in more ways than one). She never does. Now, like always, she just sighs and slips away, ties the condom off and tosses it into the wastebin. She uncuffs him, throws a blanket over him, stalks off to the bathroom. She showers, she nods in his general direction, she leaves.

He’s got no right to complain. It’s selfish enough to take this from her, asking for anything more is unthinkable. He stays silent as she shuts the door quietly behind her.

 

* * *

Agent May had come back from vacation well-rested but subdued. Like something sharp in her had been carefully filed down. _It was nice,_ she’d said when he’d asked, the general polite inquiry he’d make to any agent coming home. It was nice. It’s good to be back. If he didn’t need anything from her, she’d go hole up with the backlog of reports that had built up in her absence.

Phil didn’t need anything from her. She nodded, he smiled tightly, they went their separate ways.

It’d been Skye who finally told him, after a week of stilted conversation and botched jokes, hamfisted expressions of concern ranging from ‘we’re friends and I’m worried’ to 'I’m your boss and I need to know if there’s a problem.’ Nothing worked, obviously. She was fine. Everything was fine. The only thing that was not fine was the fact they were having this conversation again instead of attending to the metric assload of real problems they had to deal with.

It had been Skye, of course, who’d finally taken pity on him. Knocked on his office door and, wringing her hands, unleashed a torrent of mostly-useless information, about how May had gone and Andrew had still been engaged and they’d spent time as friends, not - you know, and apparently it had been nice and his fiancee had been kind and understanding and something about a dog? Whatever, but - here Skye went furtive and hush-hush, like she was leaking state secrets - it didn’t seem like that’s what May had been expecting and she seemed kind of bummed-out about it. _Don’t tell her I told you, okay? She’ll kill me._

Something must have come across in his face, his posture, because Skye had rushed forward, hugged him quickly but fiercely.

He’d said “Thanks” and she’d said “Don’t mention it,” and she’d cleared her throat and started in on her debrief. Three more entries on the list, three more gifted people on the roster. Three more bright and shiny lives for him to fuck up. He couldn’t wait.

 

* * *

May was fine and May wasn’t talking. May rarely talked, to be fair, and there was always a meeting to attend, a crisis to avert, a form to fill out; ignoring each other came easy. They stuck to business. Phil tried, occasionally. For old time’s sake. How are you doing, no how are you _really_ doing, you know you can talk to me. She just said she was fine. He could see it in her eyes, that count-to-five pause. She was cutting him slack. Humoring him. She was letting him go, and fuck if that didn’t almost hurt worse than dying had.

Things came to a head one night where nothing was happening but the job was overwhelming anyway, when he had a mountain of paperwork and an unresponsive agent (and an emotionally-unavailable friend). He’d been exhausted, and he’d missed her, and he’d said something stupid, too harsh and too raw -

And she’d pushed him against the wall. Put her knee between his legs, tangled her hands in his hair, and shoved her tongue into his mouth.

It was the first time she’d kissed him in two decades, and it was the only time after that. She pulled away from him, and pulled herself together, and given him a time and place. 2400 hours, his bedroom, make sure he wasn’t followed.

He’d sat on the edge of his bed, tablet in hand, scrolling through Ebay listings for Captain America propaganda posters. War bonds, serve your country. 2300 hours to 2330 hours putting small bids in, 2330 to 2400 hours staring at an auction ticking gradually away from his budget.

Then she’d come in without knocking, and given him a once-over - and he knew what sort of picture he made, a small middle-aged man in shirtsleeves and rumpled slacks, purchasing more nostalgic memorabilia for his nostalgic memorabilia shelves. He didn’t quite understand what she saw in him, or believed that she saw anything at all.

But she came over and sat next to him, and took his hands, and then flipped him roughly over and attached his hands to the bedframe with a pair of voice-activated handcuffs. _My voice and yours,_ she’d said, as she did the same for his ankles. _You want out, the word is 'backup’. Sorry, I had to take it out of my voicemail, wasn’t anything sexy to use. Unless 'rationing’ gets you going._

That was the first time. It keeps happening. He maybe holds onto the small hope that it could happen another way, but he isn’t complaining. She ties him up and she fucks him into the SHIELD-issued mattress. He has more of her than he’s had in years, it’d be selfish to ask for anything more.

 

* * *

Another debriefing turned hopelessly into another attempt from Skye to fix whatever she imagines needs fixing. To be fair, Phil knows that he and May are the closest things she has now to parents. It’s a responsibility, and one he’s usually happy to shoulder, but this…this, he cannot handle.

“Talk to her,” Skye insists. “Man up and have a conversation like grown-ups. You can’t let it fester, it’ll wind up exploding all over everything.” She scrunches up her nose in disgust. “Sorry, bad mental image.”

“Yeah, thanks for that. Good to know you see me as a boil that needs to be lanced.”

“Don’t be glib, okay? Not now.”

He smiles disarmingly, holds his hands up in supplication. “Serious-mode engaged.”

“It’s just - the two of you, there’s something there, it’s obvious, but you’re both miserable and alone and I don’t get why. Can’t you just, you know, hash it out?” With that transparent doe-eyed look.

She’s caring and empathetic and has little patience for bullshit; she’s had a poorly-tuned but powerful ability to shake apart toxic situations since long before the ability became literal, and he loves that about her. He does not love her applying those qualities to this particular situation. She’s biting her goddamn lip at him. Maybe he could have the concerned-pout classified as a super power, limit the use in SHIELD facilities.

He says, “We talk.” He says, “Everything is fine.” He smiles blandly. She sighs and glares and he is, momentarily, terrified of the potential ramifications of pissing her off. But nothing happens, no earthquake, just a pitying glance and her report slapped down on his desk.

Her concern is unwarranted. Everything’s fine. Are you sure that’s the whole report, because it’s only two pages and we’ve been over how important it is to be thorough -

 

* * *

Simmons had given him a choice: prosthetic or implant. The implant would be easier to use, the prosthetic would be less vulnerable to outside attacks, could be taken off and run through the dishwasher (a joke: Simmons had made a pained noise and reminded him of the gravity of the situation).

It’s the line between cyborg and human. Phil doesn’t want to get any closer to that line than he has to. He chose the prosthetic. Top of the line, the best SHIELD has to offer. So, he’s got a stump and a really expensive utensil, and carte blanche to make as many terrible puns as he desires. He could lend a hand, he doesn’t know off-hand, it might come in handy, he’ll stay hands-off this mission. Ha-ha. (And if May still has to fight back a smile when he busts out a corny line, if he can still make her laugh even if that laugh is choked back, and if it tugs at his heart to know they still have that connection, tenuous as it is - well. He won’t mention anything about it. Just say, you know, _I gotta hand it to you for keeping your spirits up._ )

He’s got the place where an important part of him used to be, and the advanced machinery that fits over top of it. He’s got whirring micro-motors and blinking lights, he’s got hardware and software and firmware that sometimes decides to update in the middle of something crucial. He’s got metal and polymer, synthetic joints, wires to circuit boards to battered nerve endings. He’s got a creepy fake-skin glove-thing that he only puts on for covert ops where a robot hand would be kind of a giveaway, because it falls a bit too firmly in the uncanny valley for it to not freak him out.

( _It’s fine_ , Simmons had said. _Think of it like a paint job for a car. Or a new shirt. It’s just a bit of plastic._ Fitz shuddered and, in that careful banter-mode he had now around her, said _no actually it is terrifying, like something out of a horror movie, honestly, does this not bother you at all?_ Waving the floppy bit of rubber around, slapping her on the nose. _It’s the corpse of Thing for chrissakes._ )

May had only flinched a little when he’d absentmindedly brought the robot hand up to cup her face, bionic fingers splayed stiffly over her cheek. He’d swallowed hard, rubbed circles gently with the thumb that had to be consciously controlled, and then withdrew. And he’d never done it again. Kept it in his pocket, or straight by his side, or out of sight above his head, or occasionally just in his desk drawer, sleeve pulled down and arm behind his back.

They don’t talk about it. She rarely lets him touch her, anyway, with either hand.

(He’d broken down in the lab, when Simmons had opened the case containing his shiny new hand. The reality of it, for whatever reason, had finally hit, and hit hard. What had happened and what he’d done, the consequences of it. How prepared he’d been to die, in that split-second. How there was even less of the original him left now. He’d fallen apart in the middle of a sentence, some dumb joke, and she’d put a tentative hand on his shoulder which had turned, awkwardly, into an even more tentative hug, and she’d held him until the shaking stopped. He trusted her with this weakness, he realized as she stepped back and busied herself with a needless 3D display. He trusted her, and he trusted Fitz in the corner continually cutting himself off on whatever he’d been about to say. He’s not sure when that became something he was willing to do. He’s not sure how comfortable he is with it. It’ll probably come back to bite him in the ass, one of these days.)

 

* * *

A time and a place, written on a post-it note stuck to Phil's desk. He memorizes the information and rips the note to shreds, practicing his mindful breathing.

He puts himself at the time and place. His rooms, 2400 hours. She opens the door without knocking. Maybe he should lock it, but he’s nothing if not an expert at making bad decisions. The door is unlocked and he’s sitting at the tiny kitchenette table, feeling equally small and inadequate. Sweating even in a t-shirt and boxers, because the air conditioning is on the fritz again. Everything is always on the fritz. The skin of his thighs sticking to the plastic chair.

She comes in without knocking and sits down across from him, without saying a word.

He wishes he had a deck of cards or something, they could play rummy, like the old days. But this is the new days, the now days, and he’s got nothing to do with his hands. Nothing to occupy his mind but her. She’s still in tactical black, which does - things, for him. Tactical black and the angle of her jaw and her cheekbones and her hair falling softly over her shoulders and her everything, really. She’s gorgeous. She’s aged so much better than he has. It’s unfair. How is she so perfect and he’s so - whatever he is?

(She’d tell him she isn’t perfect. She’d show him her crows-feet and her scars and the bits of her succumbing to gravity. If this were the fantasy where they made love instead of just a situation where she’d fuck him senseless and then leave. She’d bare her flaws to him and he’d say _no, no, don’t you understand? That’s part of why you’re perfect._ But this isn’t that fantasy.)

The small talk fails. The small talk usually fails; he always tries anyway. How are you, how’ve you been, seen any good alien artifacts lately. Staring down at his right hand resting on the table, worrying at a paper napkin. She has single-syllable answers. She has impatience and something he’d almost categorize as sadness, if he didn’t know better.

He knows her responsibilities can be a _hand_ ful, ha ha. She’s probably rolling her eyes. He turns his head slightly towards her, intensely aware of how close she is. The distance between his lips and hers, how easy it would be to just lean across the table and-

But easy to do isn’t always easily done. So he doesn’t. She glances pointedly at the clock on the wall and he puts that particular non-event in the 'deal with later, if at all’ pile. And he goes to his usual position on the bed, and she to hers.

He keeps his eyes open this time. Open, and fixed on hers, trying to put all he’s not saying into this single sustained look, willing his face to communicate what his words can’t. He tries to look, and this is probably a mistake, but it’s what he does - he tries to look like he’s in love with her. Because he is in love with her, if he’s honest. He’s been in love with her for a long, long while.

She just holds his hips hard enough to bruise, and turns her head away when she comes. Silent, like she always is. He swallows hard against the thing building in his chest.

 

* * *

He’s still always a little nervous, letting her take the wheel. When the cuffs go on, or the ropes are tied, or whatever. He’s still not all that good at letting go.

She reassures him, always. She’s not as heartless as he might like to believe. She’ll stroke his hair and give him that look, the 'I know what’s best so shut up’ one, and she’ll take his hands in hers just long enough to be comforting. It’s almost what he might have imagined they’d be, in his worst moments of self-indulgence.

“I’ve seen you lose control before,” she says, when he tries to apologize for the things he hasn’t done yet.

She doesn’t just mean the sex, he knows. She means - how he was before. Cutting alien geography into the plaster that she replaced every morning. Stands to reason she’d want him restrained, all she knows about him.

Because he’s changed, hasn’t he? Nearly as much as she had, after Bahrain. He’d died and some part of him had stayed dead. Some part of him had come back different. He’s not even sure he remembers the man he used to be, which memories are real and which are wishful thinking. The map to a drowned city still written in his DNA. Something in him a half-step away from being a monster.

“It’s okay,” she says as she presses a hand against the vein throbbing in his neck. “It’s okay.”

 

* * *

Fitz spends two minutes hovering behind the door to his office. Phil waits patiently. Eventually, the kid comes tumbling in, not doing a very good job of meeting his gaze.

“Sir.”

“Fitz.”

The you-go-first pause. The fluttering hands looking for something physical to catch, the words on the tip of his tongue. Phil waits.

Except he’s not really all that patient, and he says “So is there something you wanted to talk about” at the exact moment Fitz finding the trailing edge of his thoughts, which is:

“I don’t want to impose or assume or, or, or - but, okay. I know what it’s like to - change, right? To lose something about yourself that you thought you wouldn’t be able to live without. So if you ever want to talk about, uh, your haptic manipulator - bionic hand thing. And how that affects you. You can talk to me.”

“Thanks,” he says. “I’ll keep that in mind.” Smiling the same goddamn fake smile he gives to everyone, in every situation, until Fitz slowly backs up and out the door. Looking like he knows he’s been brushed off, looking a little crushed, and Phil would feel bad if he just had the goddamn _time_.

He’s suddenly thankful for the members of his team who are just as closed-off as he is. Hunter would never try to talk to him about feelings.

(Which is, obliquely, how he winds up taking one shot of sub-par bourbon to every two shots Hunter takes, to every glass Mack carefully nurses, holed up in what passes for a lounge in this base, 2 AM and feeling every second of it. _To big fuck-off guns and backup ninja units,_ Hunter cheers. Mack raises an eyebrow and sips his beer. Suddenly remembering that he’s Director Coulson, and everything that comes with that, he just says, _To us_ , downs a carefully-judged half of the shotglass in his hand, and takes himself to bed before he can make a fool of himself.)

 

* * *

She doesn’t run, for once. She unties the ropes and curls up on the bed beside him. Nose to nose, something unnameable in the space between them. “There are some things that I want to address.”

“Your pillow-talk could use some polishing-”

“You lied to me,” she interrupts. It’s a statement of fact, not as recriminatory as it might have been.

“And you lied to me. It’s what we do, Melinda. It sucks but secrets are part of the job.”

“The job, yeah.” Unspoken: because that’s all we are, right? Just co-workers blowing off steam.

If he’s honest - and that’s a word that’s starting to lose all meaning - she’s right. That’s all they can be. They don’t have the luxury of being anything else. He rolls onto his back. Nice ceilings they have here, at work.

“I care for you, Phil,” she says softly, reaching over to put a hand flat, undemanding, on his chest. “A lot. And. I want to trust you, I do. I’m tired of being the phantom who drops by in the middle of the night to fuck you. I want to be with you, really _with_ you. And for that to happen, some stuff needs to change. Not all the work is gonna be on my end. We need to be equal in this.”

He’s elated, if chagrined, for about two seconds. Then the rational, logical part of his brain kicks in. _You’re not equal, dumbass._ He’s not just her supervising agent, he’s _the_ supervising agent. She can tie him up all she wants, he’ll always have the upper hand. That’s not fair to her, to put it mildly. If this goes south, the ramifications would be unpleasant at best, a matter of global security at worst. _If_ this goes south. It’s been fucked from the start, who is he kidding? This was a bad, bad idea. One of his more impressive mistakes.

“We need to stop,” he whispers.

She rolls away from him and gets languidly out of bed, stretching as she goes. “Mmm. Big day tomorrow, you need your beauty sleep. We’ll talk later.”

Somewhere in him is a volume at least a little louder than 'strangled and hoarse’. He can’t find it. “No, I mean - this, all of this, we can’t do it anymore. There are rules, and, and…” He takes a shaky breath. “The rules are there for a reason.”

She looks like she’s about to punch him. He braces himself. No physical blow, good on her, but oh, that mix of rage and hurt on her face hits harder than anything else could. “Seriously? Now? After we finally - you have perfect timing, you know that?”

“Better late than never,” he says weakly.

The air is flat and stifling, the calm before the storm; and oh, what a storm she can be. She’s tense, fists balled-up, individual muscle groups flexing one after the other. She’s practically vibrating with anger. “Are you scared? Is that it? It stops being just sex and your fucking vintage, vacuum-sealed unrequited love and starts being _real_ and you don’t know what to do, so you shut it down entirely.”

“That’s not-” He swallows against the thickness in his throat. He doesn’t quite know what to say.

She’s calming herself down, manually, bit by bit. She’s putting it all away and then she’s just sort of - empty. “You know what? It’s fine. You’re right. We need to stop. Consider the relationship terminated.”

“Okay,” he says. The feeling of the cable snapping and the elevator plummeting.

“Can I have one last personal interaction before we go back to following the handbook?”

He nods, not trusting his voice.

“Fuck you, Coulson.” She gives him a final hellfire stare and storms out, leaving the door open behind her.

 

* * *

The op goes off smoothly, despite a certain amount of tension between the team members. The chunk of Chitauri tech is extracted and black-boxed safely. He follows the action from his office, not intervening much. They know their job well. They file in for the debrief and then they file out and everything is so normal, so life-goes-on, that he could jump for joy. Metaphorically speaking.

Except. Except they all look at him like he dropkicked a puppy off the roof of a ten-story building. He’s made a few bad decisions lately, they’re gonna have to be more specific than vague accusatory stares.

It’s Skye, of course, who cracks first. Or has the courage to call the Director out on his bullshit, whichever. She’s got a flimsy excuse to be here, he shoots it down, that should be the end of it. She doesn’t move when he sits back down behind his desk, the implied dismissal. Just stands there, feet planted square on the floor, watching him expectantly. He ignores her.

“So what did you do?” she asks, after he spends an extended length of time pretending to read through paperwork.

“Sorry?”

“Let me preface this by saying: at no point did I feel that Agent May was not totally on the ball and in control.”

Oh. “And?” Folding his arms, very nonchalantly.

“And she’s acting like she’s run out of every single emotion aside from being pissed off. And she’s probably pissed off at you, because who else could it be? There’s like, ten people that she interacts with, and you’re the only one who - it’s your fault. What did you _do_.”

He shrugs. “We talked.”

That incredulous, how-are-you-such-an-idiot expression. The palms-up gesture of defeat. He senses that he is now something of a disappointment to her. Another addition to the list of things he doesn’t know how to fix.

But she rallies, because that’s what she does. “Try again,” she says, with a tentative little smile. “So you said something dumb and everything’s kind of a mess but it’s not the end of the world. You can have a second chance. We all always deserve a second chance.”

He sighs heavily, rubs at the kink in his neck. “Second chance, yeah. Third chance, fourth chance, I don’t know.”

She leans over the desk and puts a hand on his shoulder, staring down at him with an alarming clarity. “Do it, DC, or so help me God I will _vibrate your brain back into place._ ” She’s joking, probably.

“Please don’t do that, head trauma is enough of a concern as it is -”

She glares.

“Okay, okay. Okay.” Palms up, the gesture of defeat.

He doesn’t realize he’s looking for May until he finds her. Just a casual stroll through the halls. She’s in the cafeteria, holding a gone-cold mug of tea, back ramrod-straight on the SHIELD-issue chair. Still scratched up and more than a little dirty - she hadn’t stopped by the infirmary after coming back from the mission. Bleeding all over the upholstery out of stubbornness, probably. He pulls the first-aid kit off the wall, cracks it open and dumps everything out on the table. Band-aids, Mylar blankets, antihistamine tablets, burn cream. And he pulls back the torn edge of her shirt, fingers trembling.

“You shouldn’t be doing this,” she says evenly. Holds still for him, though.

“What? Afraid I won’t be able to restrain myself? One touch and suddenly I’m throwing myself at you? Please.” The grin slides rapidly off his face. Going by the look she’s giving him, it’s a little too soon to be cracking jokes. He backtracks, tries for what he probably should have started out with. “We can be…friends again, May. We’ve done it once already.”

“And look where it got us.” She’s deflating, a little, slumping down in her chair. “Honestly, Phil, I just wish it hadn’t taken you so long to remember you gave a shit about ethics.”

He flinches. He deserved that. “Guess I’m getting a little self-indulgent in my old age.”

She doesn’t say anything, but the _no duh_ is made clear. He deserves that too. He pats down the fraying edge of the last bit of tape, on a (let’s get real here) frankly unnecessary bandage, and steps back. He should go, he’s got things to do, there’s always something to do; he should walk more quickly than he does to the doorway, but at least he makes it.

He pauses, weighing his options. Watching the tilt of her head, the line of her shoulders. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I am just…” He shrugs. “Nevermind. Anyway. See you around, May.”

 

* * *

There’s a message on Phil's voicemail. Or there was, he deleted it, which he now sort of regrets, but that’s the way of his world. From Hunter, sounding impressively drunk, Skye giggling in the background:

_Boss. Heard you got girl trouble. Take it from me, the sackcloth and ashes routine will fix most problems. And you gotta fix it, Boss. Please. For our sake. Get it in, get it done, get it over with it so the rest of us can have a, a, what was it? Right, 'non-hostile work environment’. Ta. Oh, and if they didn’t teach you about the birds and the bees at the Academy, I can send you some websites or pamphlets or - what? Shh, I’m trying to leave a - fuck off, I’m being incredibly respectful and professional -_

For whatever reason, that’s what changes his mind. He repays Hunter by never, ever mentioning it.

 

* * *

Phil comes into May's office without knocking. He has quite a lot of momentum, some of which is lost when she doesn’t look up from the tablet in her hand, doesn’t move from her position in the middle of the room. She’d probably been pacing. She’s not a big fan of being interrupted when she’s pacing.

He pastes a smile on his face, then takes it back off, then settles for what he would like to believe is a wary half-smile, but probably is just a grimace. “First, I’m sorry. Second, I’m sorry. Third, you should probably be sorry too. Fourth, um. You wanna give it another shot?”

She’s not looking up. He can feel himself faltering. Stick with the mission, Agent.

“I know I don’t deserve it, but. Do you have it in you to give me a-” He counts up on his fingers. “Sixth chance?”

That gets her to meet his (admittedly pathetic, but whatever) gaze. She raises an eyebrow, leans back on the desk with her arms folded.

He takes a deep breath, and tries again. “We can start over. We can make this work. I really, really want to make - I want you. Please. I’ll beg, if that’s what it takes. I’ll get down on my knees and-”

“We can’t start over.” She’s talking, at least. It could be wishful thinking but she seems to be warming a little. Just a bit.

“Sure we can. Why not, let’s do it. How far back do you wanna go? First meeting? Hi, my name’s Phil, I’m a zombie with a prosthetic hand, my job requires me to be an emotionally-distant asshole but I really like to go that extra mile, and I get about five minutes of free time every week. I think you’re very pretty, would you like to go on a date with me? I can pencil it in for three years from now.” He sticks out his hand.

She cracks a smile, almost. She takes his hand. Literally takes it, he’d popped the release on his wrist, the thing comes off in her grasp. He ducks just in time to miss it sailing back at him.

“Hey! Don’t throw SHIELD property. This was hilariously expensive to make.” He snaps the hand back on, wiggles his fingers at her. “It was too easy, I had to, I’m sorry.”

“You’ve got a lot more than that to apologize for,” she says. It’s not as recriminatory as it might have been.

“Just let me know how to start.” He steps forward and, waiting for her subtle go-ahead, kisses her.

He’d meant for it to stay chaste. This plan fails.

Dimly, he is aware that this is the first time he’s really touched her in decades. And he can’t stop touching her. Like a man dying of thirst in a desert presented with an airdrop cache of bottled water, before he knows it he’s got her on the desk, her shirt unbuttoned, her legs hooked around him, his mouth everywhere on her, sexually-applicable location or no.

“This is still a terrible idea,” he breathes into her neck.

“Yeah.”

“We’re doing it anyway.”

“Uh huh.”

“I want to make sure we’re on the same page here.”

“Phil?”

“Mmm?” He leans back, the look on his face probably classifiable as 'reverent’.

“Shut up.”

He nods, and shuts up.


End file.
